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A Conversation with an Anti-GMO Armchair Farmer

The other night, I was checking my newsfeed on Facebook when I came across a friend’s post about TEDx no longer going to post pseudoscience. Apparently, an anti-GMO fanatic decided to chime in on it and add some 100 or so replies with the pro-science folks there. The kind of things she was saying were way out there and just spammy. I decided to send her some feedback on her commentary to him.

My first message to her was, “Just saw how you spammed up Richard Ha’s thread. Geez.”

Surprisingly I got a reply from her! Of course she mentioned that she did not want her comments reposted even though she was reposting the whole conversation on her own public page. (You can read the entire conversation on her page since she didn’t want me reposting but she did the favor of posting it herself.) She was afraid that “with my mentality it would get a distorted interpretation.” Interesting.

I won’t repost her comments but I’ll list the common statements made by these anti-GMO armchair farmers.

1. You can’t trust any study at all because they are all paid for by the industry.

2. I can’t figure out real studies from papers. This is a study to her. Looks legitimate so it must be.

3. You can grow things without chemicals and just kill bugs by hand.

4. GMOs like spam and McDonalds are direct causes of diabetes.

5. There are chemicals being sprayed all around that are killing us.

6. Because I know and read a lot about farming, I can tell farmers how to rotate their crops and how to plant it.

7. We should go back to how we ate in 1778 because life was better back then.

8. There are no long term human studies on the safety of GMOs. I don’t know how it would be tested but we do need them.

10. Bans of GMO foods are the reason why they are bad. Forget the fact that the country imports it in for feed, it still is bad.

11. In order to have studies that will satisfy an anti-GMO activists requirements, the biotech industry must pay for it and the organic industry chooses the scientist. No one can be trusted unless it is chosen by their side.

12. Bugs are all the same, they aren’t different and we should love them all. Bugs are not pests. Hmmm….

13. Organic farmers should not be governed by any corporate law. Um, did you know that organics are owned by large corporations?

14. The land is being poisoned but I have no evidence to that claim but I’ll still say it.

15. I am pro science but I can’t tell you how to conduct a study or even know how to discern out legitimate ones.

16. I love watching videos, scary ones too like this one. I’m fixated on DDT. Videos relay all the information I need to know about GMOs.

16. Join in on the marches because they are fun!

Does any of this make sense to you? It sounds like a lot of mumble jumble just like the posts she puts all over the place. And these are the kinds of people that are telling our farmers and lawmakers how and what kind of laws we need in our communities. That is not the responsible thing to do and just shows that a politician or farmer should not have to listen to these kinds of constituents. Just because they are loud and proud of their ignorance does not translate into making laws. That is purely irresponsible!

**Her tirade continues on tonight once again and sure enough, out comes the Natural News links! Proof that these people don’t know quackery from science.**